2010-2011 Movie List

This year is my sixth annual movie ranking list.  Every year I keep adding more and more comments to the list, to the point where the whole thing this year is 8,000 words long and took hours to write.  I guess that’s keeping with the Hollywood tradition of sequels being bigger, flashier versions of the original, without actually being any better.  Maybe next year I should just go back to doing the list without all the commentary.  I do the ranking partly because I love movies, and I enjoy going back and thinking about what I watched over the course of the year.  But the biggest reason is to hear what other people think about the same movies, and to start a discussion about the films we loved and hated over the course of the past year.  So if you disagree – great!  Hit ‘reply all’ and tell everyone what should have been ranked higher or lower on the list, and what I should have seen and put on the list.

All in all, it wasn’t a great movie year in my opinion.  (By the way, as a teacher, the “ year” for me is September – June.)  Last year I felt like there were 20 movies that were good enough to be in this year’s top 10.  It was an especially bad year for comedies.  There were only a couple comedies I enjoyed, and for some reason a lot of the so-called comedies this year left me either angry or depressed.  Not a good thing for a comedy.  But there were some terrific films at the top of the list, and my top two this year will probably go down as some of my all-time favorites.

Today I’m sending the first part of the list – worst film first, counting down to the top twenty which I’ll send tomorrow.  Rather than doing stars or grades or anything like that, I use six different categories that I put movies into: Movies I Loved, Movies I Really Enjoyed, Good Movies worth seeing, Decent Movies, if you’re in the right mood, Movies I Didn’t Like, and Movies I Hated. So, with no further ado, here’s the list:

Movies I hated

57. Greenberg – Ben Stiller is in this movie.  One time when I was in Hawaii I rode on the same flight as Ben Stiller.  Later, I saw him smoking a cigarette in the Hawaii airport.  End of story.  It may seem like a pointless story, but trust me, it is much better than the movie Greenberg.  Usually when there is a story about a character that is a jerk, they either go through some sort of transformation, they have some sort of comeuppance, or they learn something along the way.  Very rarely do you have a movie like this where you hate the main character throughout, and  there is no coherent storyline to follow.  This film manages to do both.

56. Hot Tub Time Machine – I will admit that there were a few funny parts in this movie.  And the cast was great – John Cusack, Darryl from The Office, etc.  And a premise that sounded like a really fun movie – a hot tub, that’s also a time machine!  That takes people back to the 80’s!  But because it had so much potential for being fun, and squandered it, this movie is near the very bottom of the list.  This should have been a blast, but instead, it left you feeling bummed out.  The capper for me was when the guys from the future are watching a game on TV, and then bet on the outcome of the game to prove they are from the future.  Only by betting on the outcome of the game, the change the outcome, and lose the bet.  The only reason I cared about this is that the game was the AFC Championship game between the Broncos and Browns, the game people from Colorado refer to as “The Drive”, and my second favorite sports memory of all time.  So not only was the movie awful, they thought it would be a good idea to mess with one of my favorite  childhood sports memories.  I tried to warn several people before they saw this movie that it would suck, but they watched it anyways.  And then told me they wish they’d taken my advice.  Don’t see this movie.

55. MacGruber – I have no idea why I rented this movie.  The 30 second long MacGruber skits on Saturday Night Live are kind of funny, so maybe I thought it would have a few laughs.  I can’t comment on the whole movie, because I really only watched about 15 minutes before I realized how much it sucked.  Thankfully I didn’t stick it out for the rest of the movie.  Maybe if I’d tried to watch the rest of it, this movie would have been at the bottom of the list.

54. Thirst – Mark McNeal, I have not talked to you about this movie since you told me it was good.  Normally, I trust your recommendations, but the next time you recommend a Korean vampire movie, I will not take your advice.  This is directed by the same guy that directed Oldboy, a fascinating movie that was interesting to watch, but I didn’t enjoy the end because it was too gruesome.  This movie was gruesome too, but not fascinating or interesting, just weird. 

53. The Green Hornet – When you were in junior high, did you ever try to put together a movie with your parent’s camcorder?  My best friend, Brian Dawson, and I made multiple attempts at making short movies, including The Blob (created by some sort of industrial accident, and special effects consisting of a person under a sheet), a re-make of The Towering Inferno using his sister’s Barbie doll house, and The Adventures of Dakota Dawson and Oklahoma Oltmans (this was shortly after Raiders of the Lost Ark came out, which only partially explains the stupid names).  None of them were actually completed, and if I were able to find the videotapes for any of them, I’m sure I would cringe the whole time at how bad they were.  Now imagine if we had been given a multi-million dollar budget, and been told we could make whatever movie we wanted.  It probably would have turned out pretty similar to The Green Hornet.  Lots of cool cars and gadgets?  Check.  A superhero character?  Check.  A martial-arts expert sidekick?  Check.  A hot girl with a one-dimensional role?  Check.  An over-the top bad guy?  Check.  Bad acting?  Check.  A totally predictable plot?  Check.  The only thing that the junior high version of me would have added to this movie would have been more fart jokes and shots of people getting hit in the crotch.  I don’t know if it is more depressing that people actually do get paid to make movies like this, or that people pay to go see them.

Movies I didn’t like
52. Get Him to the Greek – Russell Brand is a pretty funny dude.  In this movie he plays the same character, partying rock’n’roller Aldus Snow, that he played in the movie Forgetting Sarah Marshall, which I enjoyed.  He was the best part of that movie as a supporting actor, but here, you get a little tired of his act for a whole movie.  There are some laughs, but I got a little tired of watching a character that didn’t seem to have any redeeming values at all.  I guess that was the point, but again, why did so many so-called comedies this year leave me feeling depressed?

51. Extract – Not awful, but one of those movies that seemed like it should be better than it was.  Jason Bateman stars as the owner of a company that makes extracts.  He’s unhappily married, and his wife cheats on him.  One of the new workers in his plant is Mila Kunis, who is very pretty, but also a con artist.  Will he sleep with her?  You’ll just have to watch the movie to find out!  Or, if you have watched more than a half dozen movies in your life, you can guess what will happen, and be right.  This is supposed to be a comedy, so why did I feel bummed out after watching it?

50. The Book of Eli – Denzel Washington can make anything watchable, right?  Right?  This is a mess of a movie.  Let me summarize the plot for you – It is a post-apocalyptic world (that owes a lot to every other post-apocalyptic movie world), in which Denzel Washington is the keeper of the only remaining copy of the Bible, which lots of people are trying to kill each other to get.  As someone that regularly reads the Bible, even I find this to be an absurd plot.  If that’s not enough, there’s a plot twist at the end that shatters any credibility this movie had.  If you want to watch a much more interesting version of this type of movie, watch last year’s adaptation of The Road.

49. Dinner for Schmucks – Steve Carrell is great.  Zach Gallifanakis is the funniest person alive right now.  I almost always enjoy Paul Rudd.  This movie stars all three of those guys, but it is not great or funny or enjoyable.  If you saw the trailer for the movie, you pretty much got the entire idea of what happens, along with most of the laughs. 

48. Unstoppable – There’s an out-of-control train loaded with something bad that is going to crash into a city.  Only Denzel Washington can save the day!  I wonder if he’ll be able to do it?  There are some movies that I rent knowing they will be predictable, and hope that Denzel or Zach Gallifanakis or Steve Carrell or some star that I like can lift the movie to watchable level.  That doesn’t happen here. 

47. Due Date – This is not officially a re-make of Planes, Trains, and Automobiles, it is just a much worse version of the same movie.  Despite the mediocre reviews, I figured a road trip movie with Robert Downey Jr. and Zach Gallifanakis would have to be funny, but like with almost every comedy this year, I was wrong.  To be honest, pretty much every movie Zach G. has been in since the Hangover hasn’t been very good, and it would begin to make me think he was a one-hit-wonder (aka John Heder as Napoleon Dynamite) that was born to play one role, and rehashes that same role unsuccessfully a few times before fading into oblivion.  Except if you go to the website FunnyorDie.com and watch a few episodes of Between Two Ferns with Zach Gallifanakis, then you’ll go back to thinking he’s the funniest person alive again.

46. The American – I don’t know why this didn’t end up being a better movie.  George Clooney is a hit man hiding out in a tiny Italian village working on ‘one last assignment’.  The scenery is beautiful, and I’ve always liked Clooney, but this movie is really dull. 

Decent if you’re in the right mood

45. Percy Jackson & the Olympians: The Lightning Thief – I read this book with my oldest son earlier in the year and really enjoyed it.  It’s an entertaining series of books aimed at pre-teen to teenage kids that uses Greek mythology as the basis for modern-day adventure stories.  Caleb and I were looking forward to seeing the movie, but it was pretty mediocre.  It doesn’t do a great job of capturing the magic of the book, and the casting seems a bit strange (Pierce Brosnan as a centaur?)  But my son liked it, and we’ll probably watch the sequel together when it comes out, so I guess it wasn’t all bad.

44. A Town Called Panic – This is easily the most bizarre movie on the list.  To start with, it is a French stop-action animated film using figurines.  Everything that happens in the movie is strange.  I rented it because it got good reviews, including being in a few top 10 lists at the end of 2010.   It is amusing at times, absurd at all times, and I’m pretty sure that if I’d been watching the movie with the right friends, or been in the right mood, I would’ve thought it was hilarious.  But there just aren’t that many times where you’re in the mood for a French stop-action animated film.

43. Goodbye Solo – This is another unusual movie that Andrew Duden recommended to me.  It’s one of those movies that I’m glad I watched, but didn’t really enjoy actually watching.  The main character is a Senegalese cab driver that meets and befriends a depressed older man.  The cab driver, Solo, is a great character, and has a ton of charisma, which by itself makes the movie watchable.  But it’s also a very slow-paced movie, and doesn’t have a real clear narrative arc.  Sometimes I enjoy that, but there are other times where I feel like I need a little bit more of a story to follow to be captivated by the movie, and this was one of those times.

42. Scott Pilgrim vs. the World – I feel like in the last couple of years I have watched about 20 different Michael Cera movies.  For one thing, last summer I watched every single episode of Arrested Development, but I’ve also seen pretty much every single movie he’s been in, and there have been plenty.  I think he’s great, but it surprises me that he is so popular and gets so many starring roles.  Not because I don’t enjoy him, but more because his humor is very understated, and he is a pretty average-looking guy, so it amazes me that he’s had so much mainstream success.  Well, this movie in particular was ok, but it was a little disappointing.  I had high expectations and it was fine, but nothing special.  If you’re only going to see one Michael Cera movie this year, Youth in Revolt is better.

41. Knight and Day – This movie is what I thought it was.  It’s a Tom Cruise action movie with lots of explosions, lots of shooting and chasing, and Cameron Diaz as the hot girl.  There’s nothing unique or different about it from dozens of other action movies, but it is fun most of the time.  Jason Bourne lite, if you will.

40. Alice in Wonderland – I enjoyed watching this one, but I get the feeling that it would’ve been a much cooler experience watching it in 3-D in the theater.  As it is, it was fun, if not memorable, and all of my kids and I enjoyed it, so that’s a plus.  The visuals are very cool, the acting is good, and the story is a little strange, but I guess it’s supposed to be.

39. Precious – Hmmm.  Where to put this one on the list.  It’s a well-made movie that isn’t easy to sit through.  It was nominated for best picture in 2009.  Mo’Nique won the award for best supporting actress for this, and the lead, Gabourey Sidebe was nominated for best actress and even landed a gig as host on Saturday Night Live after her amazing performance.  This was a powerful movie, but not an easy one to watch.  Even when it is just a movie, it is hard to watch someone dealing with so much abuse.  But for as depressing as the movie is, there is some beauty in it as well.  It is hard to imagine things turning out well for Precious, but she is also amazingly resilient, and her strength throughout the movie is impressive.  If Christopher Waltz (Inglorious Basterds) was the most evil bad-guy last year, Mo’Nique’s abusive mother is hands down the winner this year.

38. Salt – Angelina Jolie kicks ass.  That’s a sufficient summary of this movie.  It’s pretty fun.  It’s no classic, but it’s certainly better than Knight and Day.

37. The Karate Kid – I refused to see this movie at first.  I figured there was no way it could match the original, and since I already knew the story there was no point in watching a worse version of it.  But my kids talked me into renting it, and you know what?  It was fun.  Will Smith’s kid plays the Daniel role, and while he’s not a great actor he has a lot of charisma.  And casting Jackie Chan in the Mr. Miyagi role was brilliant.  Both actors make the characters their own instead of trying to mimic the originals, and it works.  They even pay tribute to the wax-on/wax-off scene in a pretty clever way.  It’s by no means a great movie – even if I hadn’t seen the original, it would have been predictable, but I have to admit that I liked it a lot more than I thought I would.

36. The Kids Are All Right – Even though this was nominated for best picture, I was reluctant to see it.  A family drama about a couple of teenage kids, their moms, and their sperm-donor dad.  Not exactly my type of movie.  Add to that the fact that two of the three lead actors are Julianne Moore and Mark Ruffalo, both of whom I find incredibly annoying, and I was expecting this movie to be near the bottom of the list.  But I actually enjoyed it.  I thought Annette Benning did a nice job as one of the moms, and the story is well done.  I wouldn’t have nominated it for best picture, but I can see why people liked it.

35. Iron Man 2 – I was never as big of a fan of the original Iron Man as some people.  I thought it was a perfect summer movie – entertaining, lots of action, not too much thinking.  The second one is more of the same, and it’s still fun.  It’s not as good as the first, and definitely falls into the trap of sequels having to make everything bigger and louder.  You could do worse than to rent this on a summer night when you’re in the mood for an action movie.

34. Cyrus – This movie stars the always great John C. Reily as a depressed divorcee that falls in love with Marisa Tomei, who has a loser adult son, Jonah Hill, that still lives with her.  In the previews it plays as a comedy, and I was pretty much expecting a slapstick rehashing of Step Brothers with the two overweight man-children fighting for attention.  So it turns out it’s not really a comedy at all.  There are a few funny moments, but all-in-all it’s a charming movie, and I really liked Reiley’s character.  A very pleasant surprise.

Good movies, worth seeing

30. Raiders of the Lost Ark
31. Lord of the Rings: Fellowship of the Ring
32. LOTR: The Two Towers
33. LOTR: Return of the King -  I didn’t know where to put these movies on the list.  Raiders is one of my favorite movies of all time – right behind the Star Wars movies as far as favorite movies from my youth.  In my Best of the Decade List I made in 2010, the Lord of the Rings Trilogy was ranked #1.  But I’ve also seen all of them a bunch of times, so I didn’t want to put them near the top with the more recent movies.  I watched all of these movies with my 10 year-old son for the first time this year, and it was awesome.  He loved all of them, and it had been long enough since I’d seen any of the movies that it was great fun to watch them again.  I would still put the original Raiders and the LOTR trilogy in my top 10 of all time, and I will fight anyone that says that these movies aren’t classics.  Random trivia question – there is one actor that is in all four of these movies.  Can any of you name him?

29. The Chronicles of Narnia: Voyage of the Dawn Treader – The third movie in the Narnia series, which remains one of my favorite children’s book series of all time.  All three movies are fun, but certainly don’t approach anything like the magic that the Lord of the Rings books capture.  Two of my three kids did not have nightmares after watching the movie.

28. Tangled – Would I have seen this movie if I didn’t have kids?  No.  Do I like musicals?  No – to the point where if for some reason I do watch a musical, I will usually fast forward through the part where they break into song.  All that said, this movie was a lot of fun.  It’s a retelling of the story of Rapunzel, and any movie that is enjoyed by a) My 4 year old daughter, b) my 6 and 10 year old sons, and c) me, has done something right. 

27. It Might Get Loud – What would happen if you got Jimmy Page (Led Zeppelin), The Edge (U2), and Jack White (The White Stripes) together to talk about playing guitar?  That’s the idea behind this movie, and it’s pretty cool.  The scenes where all three of them are together and briefly jam together are ok, but the best parts are when they are with each guy individually and they talk about their style and how it developed, how they started playing, and some of their influences.  I really enjoyed this movie, but I actually expected to like it more, considering that I probably own 20 albums by these groups combined.  But it is a must see for anyone that likes rock’n’roll guitar.
Another question: When I was in high school we’d debate stuff like who was the better guitar player – Jimmy Hendrix, Eric Clapton, or Jimmy Paige.  So who are the iconic guitar players still making music now, besides Jack White? 

26. The Town – I’m not a big fan of Ben Affleck as an actor.  But the stuff he’s written or directed I’ve enjoyed quite a bit.  I thought Good Will Hunting was terrific, and I thought Gone Baby Gone was a really underrated film.  This one was made by Ben Affleck the director, but it also stars Ben Affleck the actor.  It’s about a team of sophisticated bank robbers that’s become increasingly violent with each job they do.  And of course Affleck falls for one of the hostages from an earlier robbery.  The action scenes are intense, and Affleck’s buddy is played by the terrific Jeremy Renner, the main guy from The Hurt Locker.  Good, but not great.

25. Mesrine: Killer Instinct – This movie is a French crime movie, directed by the same person that directed #4 on this year’s list.  It’s intense.  I just recently realized that it’s part 1 of a two-part series based on a real person, and I’m looking forward to watching part 2.  Mesrine is a bad-ass dude.  He’s hard to like, and I guess that’s the only reason I don’t have this ranked higher, but it’s fascinating to watch him rise from returning war veteran to small time criminal to an internationally wanted criminal.

24. Revanche – A good old fashioned Austrian revenge movie.  A bank robber’s innocent girlfriend is accidentally killed, and he sets out to get some revenge, in a very patient, but brutal way.  This movie is dark, thought-provoking, and one of the most interesting movies on the entire list.

23. Ghost Writer – This movie was a pleasant surprise.  I had zero expectations for it – it sat around for about a month after getting it in the mail before I finally watched it, but when I did, I was glad I had.  Ewan MacGregor stars as a writer that’s helping finish the autobiography (as a ghostwriter) for the British prime minister (Pierce Brosnan), after the original ghostwriter dies.  As you might expect, there’s more to the story than initially meets the eye.  It’s suspenseful, interesting, and has roles played by Olivia Williams and Tom Wilkinson, two of my absolute favorite supporting actors.

22. The Secret in Their Eyes – Take out the last 10 minutes of this movie, and it might’ve cracked my top ten.  It’s an Argentinean movie, and it won the Academy Award for best foreign language film of 2010.  The basic plot is that a federal justice agent is retiring, and he decides to write a book about an unsolved case that bothered him for his whole career.  It’s a great mystery, the characters are great, the acting is great, and there are several layers to the story that make it intriguing.  It was a movie I really enjoyed watching, but with any mystery, if it doesn’t conclude in a satisfying way, you feel a bit let down by everything that led up to it.  Don’t let that keep you from watching it – it’s a good film.

21. Despicable Me – My favorite non-Pixar kids movie of the year.  Our whole family loved this one.  Steve Carrell is the voice of Gru, a super-villain that adopts three orphan girls as part of a scheme to outwit his nemesis.  He ends up killing the three girls, and the whole thing is very dark.  Just kidding – of course he doesn’t kill them – you can probably guess how the movie turns out, but the whole thing is fun, and yes, heartwarming.

Good Movies, Worth Seeing

20. Youth in Revolt – I already spoke at length about Michael Cera earlier, but this was the better of the two Michael Cera movies I saw this year.  He always sort of plays the same character, but in this one his typical sad-sack teenager also develops an alter-ego to help himself out of his problems.  So about half the movie is him doing his usual schtick, but the other half is him in this bad-guy alter ego, which is hilarious.  Lots of things go poorly, but in a funny way

19. Let Me In – When I heard they were making this movie, I was sure it was going to suck.  An American re-make of the Swedish vampire movie Let The Right One In, which was in my top 10 a couple years ago.  The first one was creepy, dark, cold, violent, and also the anti-Twilight – an original take on the vampire genre.  There was no way they could get the re-make right.  But they did.  It started with good casting (Chloe Moretz from Kick-Ass, and Kodi Smit-McPhee from The Road).  It didn’t hurt that they really closely followed the original story, without trying to soften it or make it more appealing to a mass audience.  In fact, I thought that in some ways it was more gruesome, without quite devolving into a slasher film.  Not a movie for everyone, and if you only see one, I’d still recommend the original, but this was a good movie in its own right, and if you’ve already seen the original, this is worth seeing.

18. The Tourist – For me, there are certain actors that just light up the screen.  It isn’t just a physical appearance thing, although that doesn’t hurt.  It isn’t all about acting ability either.  Russell Crow and George Clooney are both fine actors.  Russell Crow doesn’t really excite me in any way, but George Clooney is to me, the quintessential movie star – even in movies I don’t like (like The American), I’m drawn to watching him.  Denzel Washington used to always be that way for me, and so is Johnny Depp.  As far as actresses go, Julia Roberts used to own the movie star category for me, but now, the single most captivating person to watch is Angelina Jolie.  Ok, I’ll admit it does have a lot to do with her looks, but there are plenty of attractive actresses that don’t have anywhere close to the same magic she has on screen.  So this movie is pretty good – nothing out of the ordinary, but it stars Depp and Jolie, and the two of them make it fun.  So maybe if you aren’t quite as smitten by Angelina Jolie as I am you won’t love it, but the two of them, plus a fun story made this a good one for me.

17. Date Night – In a year in which I HATED almost every comedy I saw, the fact that this one was funny and didn’t leave me depressed gets bonus ranking points.  Steve Carrell and Tina Fey are a married couple that go out on a date night that goes horribly wrong.  I’ve always liked Tina Fey – I like her movies, I like 30 Rock, and I thought she was one of the all-time great SNL news anchors.  She and Steve Carrell are good together, and it’s a fun movie, which I don’t think I can say about any other comedy the ENTIRE year!

16. Kick Ass – My memory of this movie will be forever entwined with what happened after the movie.  First, the movie.  You’ve got a couple of teen/kid wannabe superheros that may or may not get themselves in over their head dealing with some real bad guys.  It’s quite violent, and it is a bit unsettling to see this level of violence and profanity coming from fairly young kids, but then again, that’s what makes it funny/intense as well.  Kick Ass is the name of one of the superheros, but as one of my friends pointed out, the movie probably should have been called Hit Girl, because her character is the one that ends up doing most of the ass-kicking.  This is the movie that Green Hornet wishes it could have been.
And then there was after the movie.  I saw this movie just after the school year ended with Mark McNeal, Andrew Duden, Jason Parris, and Dan Kumprey.  The movie was at …., so we all had a couple of beers during the movie, and may have had a couple of beers before as well, which I’m sure had nothing to do with what transpired after the movie.  So as we’re walking out, somebody’s beer cup gets knocked on to the floor, but not by one of us.  A woman leaving the theater at the same time, apparently empowered by the amount of ass-kicking that happens during the movie, turns to Jason and says “Pick that up!”  So he does, even though someone else knocked it over.  It was still dark in the theater, but this woman was clearly pissed off.  After we get out of the theater, we were laughing about the incident and trying to figure out who it was that had yelled at Jason.  A minute or so later a woman walks out that I could tell was obviously the yeller – I hadn’t seen her in the theater, but she just looked like the type of person that would yell at a stranger to pick up a beer cup.  As she walks by, I started loudly giving Jason a hard time about leaving a mess in the theater, which, admittedly, I may have been trying to kick the hornet’s nest a little bit.  She gets about half a block away, and then can’t keep it in anymore, and starts going off about a-holes that don’t pick up after themselves, and what inconsiderate jerks we were, which was pretty amusing because to that point the only thing we had done was pick up a beer cup someone else knocked over.  And then one person in our group, I won’t name any names, may have uttered a string of profanities back at her, including calling her a witch, or at least something that sounds like witch.  If the powder keg had been smoldering lightly before, the witch comment caused a full-blown explosion.  From that point on, I was somewhat surprised that a) no police were called, and b) Jason didn’t end up getting hit by a woman.  Although it did involve her screaming at him “Why do you hate women!!!!” among other things.  I mostly just sat back and watched the whole thing unfold, and the whole thing was probably just as entertaining as the movie, which was quite good.  So the movie itself might not have cracked my top 10, but as far as the whole moviegoing experience, it can’t be topped.

15. The Other Guys – This was a comedy that maybe shouldn’t be so high on the list, but because it’s a comedy that I actually laughed at several times, it ends up being my highest-ranked comedy of the year.  Most of the humor in the movie is Will Ferrell being himself, and I know that doesn’t appeal to everyone. Most of the dialogue between Ferrell and Mark Wahlberg seems like it was ad-libbed, and with Will Ferrell that’s usually a good thing.

14. Toy Story 3 – This was my favorite kids movie of the year, even though it was a sequel to a sequel.  Pixar movies just always end up being really good.  Like the other Toy Story movies it has a lot of heart, but it also has one of the most evil bad guys of the year – Lot’s-o’-huggin’ bear.

13. The Messenger – A couple of times every year I get a movie in the mail that I’ve heard good things about, and I feel like I should watch, but the movie just sounds so boring or depressing that it sits around for weeks before I touch it.  This movie was one of those, but when I did finally see it, it was a terrific surprise.  Ben Foster plays an army officer that is injured in Iraq, and when he comes back he is assigned to the casualty notification team – basically he gets to go tell people that there child/husband died in the war.  He gets teamed with Woody Harrelson, the old pro showing him how it’s done, and how to remain emotionally detached.  It sounds like a soul-crushing movie, and there are some moments of profound sadness. But the story is more about how these two men bond, fight, and are transformed by what they are doing.  I’m not a big Woody Harrelson fan, but he nails this role, and Foster is perfect as the physically and emotionally scarred soldier trying to figure out life.

12. Green Zone – This was probably my favorite true action movie of the year, in a weak year for action movies.  Matt Damon stars as an army officer looking for the supposed weapons of mass destruction after the US invasion of Iraq.  After repeatedly coming up empty after being giving intelligence on the whereabouts of the WMD’s, he begins to suspect that something’s up.  This is directed by Paul Greengrass, the guy who did the Bourne movies, and in the previews they tried to make this look like it was essentially Jason Bourne Goes to Iraq.  I liked the Bourne movies, but I was pleasantly surprised to realize this was as much a political movie as it was an action movie, and Damon’s character is actually based on a real person. 

Movies I really enjoyed
11. Arrested Development – Not a movie, and not recent, but I feel like I have to put this TV series on the list this year because I watched every single episode of it last summer.  When the show was still on I tried watching a few episodes, and never really got into it, but thought I’d give it another try.  I’m so glad I did.  The characters are so good, and the writing is so good, it’s just a classic TV series.  Jason Bateman, a young Michael Cera, David Cross, Tony Hale, Jeffery Tambor, Jessica Walter, Portia De Rossi,  and Will Arnett all are hillarious in their roles, it’s a shame this show wasn’t around longer.

10. The Fighter – It took me a while to get around to watching this one, because I sort of felt like the whole “down on his luck boxer rising to the top” story has been done more than enough, thank you.  Hell – there’s even a movie about a down on his luck ROBOT boxer coming out this summer – that’s how overdone this genre is.  But I heard enough good reviews to make me sit down and give it a chance.  It’s fine as a boxing movie, but the fascinating part is watching the family at the center of the film – truly a dysfunctional family if there ever was one.  Christian Bale is what makes the movie terrific, playing Mark Walberg’s drug-addicted former champion brother.  He becomes the character to such an extent that you sort of take it for granted, and then at one point during the movie, I thought to myself “Wow – this is the same guy that played Batman”.  Between the physical change he underwent for the role, and the mannerisms he took on, it didn’t even seem like the same person.

9. The Class – Yet another French movie on my list, and a terrific one at that.  Anyone that is a teacher should see this movie.  It is so realistic that I actually thought I was watching a documentary for most of the movie.  It follows a French teacher over the course of a school year with his students.  There’s no real narrative – it just follows the lives of the teacher and his students as they make their way through the year.  The teacher is a really interesting guy, and really engages his students, but he’s a pretty mediocre teacher – not very good classroom management, and he doesn’t always make great decisions.  This was clearly made by people that know what a high school is like because everything  is incredibly realistic.  After watching it I decided that it would be really fascinating to watch this movie with a group of students and teachers and discuss the movie with them.  All kinds of interesting things come up – racial tensions, teacher-student interactions, bullying – it’s just a fascinating movie that I think would cause very different reactions depending on your perspective.  It’s also fascinating to realize that in a lot of ways, high school is high school, whether you’re in a rich suburb of Portland or in a poor school in inner city Paris, there are a lot of similarities.

8. Source Code – Jake Gyllenhall is on a train that is going to blow up.  Or maybe it’s not really him on the train.  The bomber is on the train, and it’s his job to figure out who the bomber is.  Except he can’t prevent the bombing.  Or maybe he can.  I don’t want to give away any more of the movie than that, because I don’t think too many people saw this movie, and it’s an excellent science fiction thriller.  It’s directed by Duncan Jones, the guy who directed one of my favorite movies from last year, Moon.  He also happens to be David Bowie’s son.  This movie has some similarities to Moon, in the sense that it is a pretty sparse movie – no soundtrack, only a handful of characters (although not as few as moon), and it’s a science fiction movie that’s really all about the story and not at all about special effects.  If you liked Moon, you’ll like this.  If you haven’t seen Moon, go rent it right now.

7. 127 Hours  - How could you possibly make a movie interesting when it’s about a guy trapped, by himself, under a rock, when everyone that sees the movie knows the movie is going to end with somebody cutting off his own arm?  It’s all about how you tell the story.  If you’ve got the right person directing, and the right actor, you can make just about anything work.  Danny Boyle has got to be the most interesting director working right now.  It’s not just that he makes good movies, it’s they are all such different genres.  Trainspotting (heroin addicts), 28 Days Later (Zombies), and Slumdog Millionaire (Indian street children) are about as different as you can get, but they’re all great movies.  The actor given the job of almost single-handedly  carrying the movie is James Franco.  I first saw James Franco about 10 years ago as a stoner high school student on the great show Freaks and Geeks, playing one of the slacker ‘Freaks’, along with Seth Rogen and Jason Seegal.  If you had told me then that the stoner who played Daniel Desario would go on to be nominated for best actor in a major motion picture, I probably would have thought that was about as likely as Daniel-Day Lewis signing up to do sitcoms.  As unlikely as it seems, he is great in this role, and even though you know where the story is going it’s very uplifting, and like Slumdog Millionaire (but probably not like 28 Days Later!) leaves you feeling good about the human spirit.

6. The Social Network – Facebook is an amazing thing.  Say what you will about it, it has changed the way we interact, and the way we keep in touch with each other.  For me, it has been a pretty cool way to reconnect with a bunch of old friends from high school and college, as well as keep in touch with some former students.  I could do without the status updates of fellow middle-aged friends that post every few hours about things like making dinner or how sick their kid is.  But by and large I really like it.  This movie captures the cultural setting that led to the creation of Facebook, and it takes something that should be boring (how a website started) and makes it riveting.  There weren’t many characters that I liked by the end of the movie, but I found myself wishing it was longer, even though it was already a couple hours long.  Like James Franco in 127 Hours, Jesse Eisenberg goes from goofy comedy actor to being nominated for best actor, and was way better than I would’ve thought he could possibly be.  On a side note, he’s  the only actor to appear in my top 10 last year (Zombieland) and this year.

5. A Prophet - How did I end up seeing so many French movies this year?  Maybe it was my years of French class in jr. high and high school (The highlight?  The name I had to go by in class – Jean) that has drawn me to their culture.  Probably not.  When I mention that the movie is French, you probably have a stereotype of what the movie might be like, but not a single one of the ones that I watched this year fit that stereotype.  This movie was as brutal as anything on the list.  It is the story of Malik, a young Frenchman of North African descent.  The movie opens with Malik entering a prison that is controlled by two rival groups – the Muslims and the Corsicans.  Malik isn’t initially accepted by either group, but the movie follows him as he figures out how to survive, and eventually thrive in the brutal prison culture and becomes a hardened criminal.  If we had watched movies like this, instead of ‘Jean de Florette’ in high school French class, maybe I would have lasted past 10^th grade.  Of course it probably would have gotten the teacher fired to show something like this, but still.  Great movie.

4. The King’s Speech – I probably don’t have much to add to what’s already been said about this movie, considering it won best picture.  I didn’t think I could possibly be interested in a movie about a king trying to overcome a speech impediment, but after the 50^th person I talked to telling me it was good, I went to see it.  It’s as good as everyone says it is, although I will admit that I found it slow at a few points.  Geoffery Rush and Colin Firth are sooo good – that’s how you can make a 2+ hour movie about stuttering – when the two leads in the movie are just perfect, and you have a script that is interesting, and quite funny at times. 

3. Winter’s Bone – the best picture nominee that not many people actually saw.  The only one of the nominated movies I didn’t see this year was Black Swan.  I’m sure that was a fine movie, but even the people that said they thought it was good told me they didn’t really enjoy it.  I’ll pass.  This one is far from uplifting – it’s a dark, cold movie about a dirt poor family living in Appalachia, about to lose their house, while surrounded by meth addicts, a mom that has lost her marbles, and some truly scary people.  Jennifer Lawrence plays Ree Dolly, a teenager that has been forced to take care of her younger brother and sister after her mom went nuts and her dad disappeared.  She is amazingly tough and determined as she tries to track down what’s happened to her dad, while looking out for what’s left of her family.  My favorite part of the movie was her uncle, who goes by the name Teardrop.  John Hawkes was nominated for best supporting actor for this role, and he’s a sight to behold.  Christian Bale was deserving of the award for his role in The Fighter, but my vote would have gone to Hawkes.  Very few of the actors in the movie are people you’ll recognize, but they are all so good they help make this mystery/drama one of the best movies of the year.

Movies I loved
 The top two movies on my list this year were a cut above.  Movies that as soon as I watched them, I knew they were both going to go on my all-time top 50.  The movie at the top of the list was one that I knew right away would be the best movie I saw this year.  Both were the kind of movies I could watch over and over and not get tired of.  So here they are:

2. True Grit – I haven’t seen the original version of this movie with John Wayne, but I doubt it’s anywhere close to as good.  Everything about this movie is amazing.  Jeff Bridges has become a brilliant, versatile, actor.  He’s tough, funny, violent, and you can’t take your eyes off him.  But just as much of a star is Hayley Steinfeld, a 13 –year-old firecracker that lights up the screen.    If I had to narrow down all the characters I saw in every movie this year – male, female, young, old, lead, supporting actor, …everything, to just one most memorable character of the year, it would be her.  The script by the Cohen brothers is fantastic, and she gives an amazing performance.  I’ve always been a fan of Westerns, and this one will go down as one of my favorite Westerns of all time. 

1. Inception – I can’t really imagine a movie that I could like much more than this one.  There’s a lot going on in the story, but if you haven’t seen it, the less you know about the movie going in, the better.  It’s confusing at times, but personally, I love movies that make you think a little bit to follow what’s going on.  The short version is that it’s a movie about people that enter other people’s dreams.  But there are several things going on – a mission that they’re trying to accomplish, as well as personal demons that are being wrestled with.  And visually, it’s one of the most amazing movies I’ve ever seen.  I wouldn’t call it strictly an action movie, but it has the best action scene – the zero gravity fight – in any movie this year, or in recent years.  The special effects are mind-blowing, but they’re used in service of the plot, rather than becoming something that drives the movie.  The acting is fine, but not spectacular.  But it’s a terrifically fun story to watch, and visually, it is unlike anything I’ve ever seen.  I rarely watch movies twice in a year, but this was one I had to watch a couple times.  This is one of my all-time favorite movies.

And finally, I couldn’t help but notice that this was a Christopher Nolan movie, who also directed The Dark Knight, which was the number one movie on my list two year ago, and also directed Memento, which is a great movie.  So I think that I’d have to say that Christopher Nolan is probably my current favorite director.  So in honor of his being at the top of my annual film list (a very small, honor, indeed), and a nod to Inception, here is my list within a list of my favorite current directors:
1. Christopher Nolan
2. Wes Anderson
3. Joel and Ethan Cohen
4. Danny Boyle

If you are still reading at this point, you are a truly devoted movie lover, so I have a couple of cool movie websites that I found within the last year.  The first is one I just found last week.  It’s an interactive graphic program put together by Slate magazine that allows you to plot the career trajectory of any actor or director.  They put together a database of all the movies recorded on the Rotten Tomatoes website and the interactive feature allows you to enter a name, and it shows you whether their movies are getting better, getting worse, staying the same, etc.  It’s pretty fascinating, and if you find a particular interesting career trajectory (such as M. Night Shaymalan’s massive downward spiral), pass it along:
http://www.slate.com/id/2296070/pagenum/all

The next one is also very fun:
http://movieclips.com/

It allows you to watch short clips from lots of movies.  It’s fun (and addictive) to watch clips from movies you like, and it also can be a nifty tool at times for teaching, if you want to add a short movie clip into a lecture.  For example when we were talking about global warming in Ecology, I showed a short clip from the movie The Day After Tomorrow (a truly awful movie, and almost 100% scientifically inacurate) to grab people’s attention at the start of class.  There are still a lot of movies that they don’t have in their database, but the number of films is continually increasing.  Watch the Movie Genome Project intro, or just jump right in to watching clips.  But be warned, it is addictive.